Horst Strempel - Island of Salamis, Greece 1945 - Oil on Canvas P3330
Measures 27" x 28", frame is 31 3/4" x 33". Signed on the back.
Painted after his release from the last of the prison camps he was confined to during WWII, by the Vichy French, The Germans, and finally the British! It is a reaffirmation of the beauty of the world after the nightmare of the war years.
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Horst Strempel was born in Upper Silesia in 1904 and studied painting at the Wroclaw Academy of Fine Arts, from 1921 to 1929. Thereupon he was active in Paris until 1931. After a short stay in Berlin, he finally emigrated to Paris in 1933. Here, he was especially commissioned as a cartoonist by several French newspapers, including, for instance, Le Monde.
In 1936, Strempel corresponded with the ‘Freie Künstlerbund’, founded by exiled Germans in 1936. Due to his arrest as an ‘enemy in exile’ he was sent to several internment camps, including Gurs. In 1941 Strempel was finally delivered by the Vichy regime to the Gestapo, which was followed by an English captivation from 1944 to 1945.
After returning to Germany, Strempel painted his famous triptych ‘Nacht über Deutschland’ in 1944/45 (now in the National galerie Berlin). In 1947 Strempel was appointed professor of the ‘Hochschule für Bildende und Angewandte Kunst‘ in Berlin-Weißensee. In 1953 he was allowed to move to West-Berlin.
Although significant parts of his artistic output got lost during the war, there are a number of works preserved at the Nationalgalerie, the Kupferstichkabinett and the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin. Strempel died in 1975.
